


a story like this before

by pseudocitrus



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Feels, Fluff, Non-Linear Narrative, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Shorts, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 02:55:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3961798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shorts about Kirishima Arata and Kirishima Hikari.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sample

**Author's Note:**

> a cleaned-up version of something originally posted to my drabbles collection, and some other shorts i've been posting to tumblr recently!
> 
> this fic assumes that Yomo's sister is Touka's mother.
> 
> i'm so obsessed with the Kirishima parents ;////;
> 
> hope you're having a good day, & enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Hikari and Arata meet.

1.

Hikari is the one who takes notice of him first, scavenging for food. He doesn’t seem like the type of human that’ll be missed by anyone, so she watches, and waits for a time when he will be alone.

Fortunately, he seems to be alone all the time. The prime opportunity comes that night, and she attacks, so quickly that he is too stunned to fight back. She rips at him with her teeth, and immediately chokes.

It tastes horrible.

“You’re _a ghoul!_ ”

He rubs the bite she gave him. He looks apologetic. “Ah...yes.”

How — how _embarrassing._ Hikari spits and wipes her mouth and reaches down to help him to his feet.

“I-I’m really, really sorry...”

“It’s okay,” he tells her, scratching his head. “Please don’t worry about it.”

He has a really kind smile.

:::

She begins to feel like she’s seeing him here and there all the time. Hikari asks around about what type of kagune he has, but no one can give her an answer; no one has ever seen him fight or hunt.

Curious, she tails him, again. This time, she finds his lone self collecting corpses, and something catches in her chest.

She finds him during the next day’s daylight, and asks, “Do you want to come over for dinner?”

“What?” He seems astonished by the idea, and Hikari swallows, understanding belatedly that it’s probably improper for a strange woman to be inviting a strange man into her house.

“It’s nothing weird,” she insists. “It’s just — y-you know — to make up for...for what I did to you. When we first met.”

He scratches his head, and then nods. He has a smile that incredibly gentle smile again, one that seems to say that he doesn’t find her weird at all.

“Okay,” he agrees, and she tells him the address, and then her name. He replies with his.

They stand there for a little longer than is necessary, shuffling their feet; then they bow hastily, and part.

 

* * *

 

2.

Kirishima Arata has a really — _humble_ — manner of dress, but it’s kind of refreshing after encountering so many ghouls in this ward with violent tendencies and ostentatious styles. Renji is bewildered and suspicious and secretly jealous of how his sister’s pity turns into curiosity and then delight for this stranger who basically admits that he’s too weak to do anything but eat garbage.

“That’s not weakness,” Hikari tells him. Her eye glitters. “I bet you'd be doing it too if you weren’t _sooo_ afraid of bugs.”

“Whatever,” he mutters.

:::

She’s right that he’s afraid of something, though, and Renji watches it happen with dismay that he is careful to conceal from her. Kirishima begins coming over for dinner all the time. He starts dressing nicely for her. He bakes her a cake for her birthday, which she is delighted to receive even if she can’t eat it. They coat it with hairspray and for a week it decorates their table, like a bouquet.

After a lifetime of watching his sister take care of him, he’s (begrudgingly) glad that someone seems invested in taking care of her.

“Of course you can,” he mumbles, when Kirishima asks. “But she’s my sister, you know. She’s my only family. So you better protect her.”

“I promise,” Kirishima says.

:::

There's no one to invite, really, so it’s a small wedding. Renji acquires wine that they can drink. They prop the marriage certificate up on the table, and pop the cork of the wine bottle, and make a toast wishing for the usual: a long life together, filled with happiness.


	2. Explicit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hikari tries to get Arata to talk dirty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more hikarata based on some headcanons exchanged with nei -cough-

She’s never really been into this sort of thing before. Her husband, though, is the kindest person alive, and that’s probably why, when the idea occurs to her, she can’t help but try to goad him into it.

“Just repeat after me,” Hikari says, and Arata doesn’t nod, but she continues anyway.

“‘Wet.’”

“H-Hikari, please, I —”

 _“Wet._ ”

“…wet,” he mumbles. He’s already turning red.

“Good! Good! Okay, next: ‘dripping.’”

He looks like he’s going to argue again and she pinches his cheek warningly.

“D-dripping,” he manages. The word is garbled somewhat by her pinch, but still mostly coherent.

“Okay, okay, now the important one.” She puts both her hands on his cheeks so that he can’t look away. “‘ _Pussy._ ’”

It’s like someone smeared his face with red dye. He shakes his head with such vehemence that he shakes it from her grip. He buries his face into the futon, but it’s no use: she just shoves up his sweater and tickles his belly mercilessly. Soon he’s writhing on his back gasping, “ _Pussy, pussy, pussyyy,_ ” but the tone isn’t really too compelling, so she sighs and gives up.

“How about ‘dick?’” she asks later, while he’s cooking stew, and he drops the ladle.

“I — u-um — m-maybe.”

“Yeah? How about, ‘I’m going to pound you silly with my huge dick?’”

The skin visible above his sweater collar is changing color with incredible speed.

“Come on,” Hikari whines. “Why is it embarrassing? You’re the one who has it. It’s your own body.”

“I g-guess I just…I mean, I just don’t really…think of it that way. With that name. And that…adjective. And verb.”

She leans back. “What kind of verb _do_ you use when you think about doing it, then?”

“Well…personally…I think of it as ‘making love,’” he murmurs. “To my precious wife.”

Hikari doesn’t respond. He looks back at her. She is tilting her head, pursing her lips.

“How about, ‘making love to my precious slut?’” she asks, and Arata chokes a little bit, and she sighs.

“Okay, okay, okay. Nevermind.”

This is just what relationships are about, she supposes. If her sweet Arata can’t bring himself to “drown her cunt with the hot cum she’s so thirsty for,” well, she can live with that.

 _Maybe,_ she thinks idly, while watering their windowsill plants, _it really wouldn’t be such a turn-on anyway._

This is the exact thought crossing her mind when she feels his arms wrap around her shoulders. She smiles to herself and leans back against his chest.

“Morning, Ara,” she sighs happily, and he nuzzles her ear.

“Good morning, Hikari.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Ah…it was alright. I was…thinking a lot, though.”

“Oh? About what?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Sure.”

His mouth draws close to her ear. He nibbles the lobe of it, and then whispers.

“I was thinking about how, the last time I fucked you, that filthy hole of yours was throbbing so hard that I was getting milked completely dry.”

She stiffens.

“Your cunt was just begging and crying to be filled up,” he continues, and Hikari finds that she’s no longer capable of breathing.

 _I’ve made a mistake,_ she thinks, _this isn’t my husband, there’s a stranger in my house —_

And yet — and yet — his _voice_ —

“I’ve never seen anything so gleaming and red and delicious in my life,” Arata is saying, squeezing her. “Your lewd body drove me so wild I couldn’t even think. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to slurp up all your juices…or churn up all those soft insides…or do neither, and just listen to you plead and scream my name.”

 _Okay,_ she thinks, meeting his gaze in the window reflection, _okay, yes, this is hot, this is really, really, really hot._

This is the exact thought crossing her mind when she suddenly feels him release her. She blinks and turns around, and sees nothing but the blur of his threadbare sweater and socks disappearing into the bedroom. She hears, faintly, the now-familiar sound of him making a muffled cry of anguish.

Oh no, no, no, no. _No_.

“Arata!” she shouts. “ _Arata_!”

She finds him exactly as she expected him, with his face planted firmly in the futon, and wrestles him onto his back. Sure enough, he’s flushed.

“I’m sorry,” he moans. “I’m sorry, Hikari, I really tried, but I just…I can’t…”

“Arata, no, it was _perfect_.” Hikari shakes his shoulders. “It was good! It was really good! Keep going!”

“I can’t…I don’t even know…I didn’t think through any further than what I said.”

She rubs him a little, encouragingly, and he shivers.

“Come on, Arata. You can do it.” She makes her voice into a purr. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m…I mean…of course, I’d do whatever you want.”

“And what is it I want? Come on! What does your slutty wife want?”

She wriggles her fingers threateningly over his quivering belly and he gasps, “T-to…to be pounded silly! By…by, um…by my…huge…”

His sentence finishes with a sort of incoherent wail and the shockingly loud noise of himself slapping his hands on his face.

…oh well. Good things never last.

“You were doing so well,” Hikari pouts later, as they’re eating dinner. “It was really, really good. What made you stop?”

“I…I don’t know.” He thinks. “I guess…I just…when I saw you, I just realized…how cruel I sounded. I’m really not…that kind of…person. I mean, I want…it would be nice to do something like that for you, if you want it. But whenever I try, I just keep thinking to myself: how could I say — those things — to my own beloved wife?”

Hikari sighs. Arata is too wonderful for his own good. How did this poor man ever manage to get by without her?

And yet.

“What do you mean, ‘when you saw me?’ Weren’t you looking at me the whole time?”

“W-well, yes. I guess it’s not so much when I saw you as it was when I saw your face,” he clarifies. “You looked at me, in the window reflection.”

“So it was eye contact, huh.” Hikari’s lips purse. “Hmmm.”

They don’t have a ton in the way of possessions, but after some rummaging they manage to find a scarf that will work just fine. And though Arata is still a little awkward about it at first, it turns out to definitely help things if she wears a blindfold.


	3. Fill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hikari and Arata and pwp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [INSPIRED A LOT BY THIS PICTURE OF ARATA THAT NEIMANA DREW AAAHH.](http://neimana.tumblr.com/post/118674132263/arata)

Arata has always been a peaceful man. So, on some level, it’s shocking, and even a little frightening, how much he enjoys seeing his wife this way — her skin glistening with sweat, and yielding lusciously beneath his fingertips — her brows red and all in furrows — her breasts heaving. Her mouth gasping.

“Arata —  _Arata_  —”

Her voice is hoarse and just barely louder than the wet noise of himself entering her again and again. He brushes her bangs behind an ear.

“Can — can you breathe?” he pants. He slows, and immediately Hikari digs her heel into the back of his thigh.

“Yes,” she tells him, “don’t stop, I’m close,  _don’t stop_ ,” she puts her hands on either side of his face and draws it close to hers and she is so beautiful, she’s  _gorgeous_ , he can’t help a particularly fierce thrust and can’t help how delicious he finds the sound of her voice crying out with renewed fervor. His mouth is dry and he wets it with the fresh, sweet sweat beading on her neck.

Hikari is trying to look at him, again, and he pushes her hair away from her eye, again.

“Arata, you feel so good.” Her voice is a purr. It resonates throughout his whole body. His heart seizes a little as her mouth opens again, oh no, she’s going to say it, she’s going to say it, she wraps her arms around his neck and clutches him close and her lips are at his ear, so that there’s no chance he’ll miss it.

“Fill me up, Arata,” she whispers. “You feel so good, and I want you so much — please, Arata,  _please_  — I’m so hungry, I’m so empty, all I want is to be brimming with your hot, thick —”

He interrupts her with a kiss so rash that their teeth click. She doesn’t finish, but the job is done; his body is spasming and his muscles are clenching and he’s ramming himself into her with strokes that don’t slow even after she is done bucking against him. After an embarrassing amount of time, he collapses onto her, breathless, burying his violently red face against her neck.

“Why…why do you need to say it like that,” he moans, and Hikari chuckles. Her fingers thresh through his hair, nails scraping pleasantly against his scalp.

“Because it’s true,” she tells him, kissing his ear. “And because you come so much harder.”

He still can’t quite bring himself to look at her, but he squeezes her, gently.

“So it was negative again,” he murmurs.

“Hmm,” Hikari says. “When did I say that?”

It takes a moment for her words to sink in. Even when they do, all he can manage is to sit himself up on his arms and stare.

“ _Huh_?”

She’s smiling at him. It’s not her normal smirk, but something huge, and messy, and exuberant. His heart is beating so fast that he feels faint, and he shakes her, just a little bit.

“Hikari!” he gasps. “ _What_?”

In answer, she reaches for a drawer beside the couch, and withdraws something from it. She holds it in both hands, grinning, and turns it until he can see its window, and the two little lines in it.

“Congratulations, papa,” she says. She loves so much to tease; she laughs as tears fill his eyes.


	4. Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hikari and Arata and the words they don't say.

“Hikari,” he gasps. “I love you.”

Hikari blinks.

“I love you,” Arata repeats, a little more strongly, and he knows it for sure now, because the feeling doesn’t quell even when she clearly suppresses a laugh.

“Do you say that to _everyone_ right after the second time you sleep with them?”

“No,” he tells her softly. “I don’t.”

For him, things don’t usually get to a “second time,” much less almost immediately after the first. He doesn’t explain this, but only because he is pretty sure she understands it already. After asking to see his kagune, after watching the grotesque way it covered almost every centimeter of his skin, she had only tapped it with a fingernail and commented, _Impenetrable body armor, huh. Makes sense._

He hadn’t remarked on hers, but privately thought that was fitting, too, for her kagune to have such piercing light.

“You don’t need to have an answer,” he says. “I just…wanted you to know.”

Her smile broadens into something that pierces him a little harder. She reaches down and cradles his cheeks, and shifts her weight back and forth on her hips until, impossibly, he’s trembling and getting hard again.

“I really like you too,” Hikari whispers, afterward, and though he feels like a shivering mess already, this admission is enough to make him completely unravel. He kisses her, hard, drawing a little blood, and she laughs off his apologies.

:::

“Has Nee-chan ever even said that she loves you?” Renji-kun asks, crossing his arms, and Arata smiles and scratches his head.

“No,” he says. “And, yes.”

_I really like you too._

Or, _You’re so wonderful._

Or, _Are you happy?_

Those are all the ways she’s said it.

“She never says ‘I love you’ to anyone,” Arata says, and Renji-kun snorts and looks away. His trick question was caught.

“Do you know why?” Arata asks, and Renji-kun leans against the doorframe.

“Probably superstition or something,” he says. “It’s funny. They say when you lose someone you always regret not saying things like ‘I love you.’ But in Nee-chan’s case, I think she just got left with a bad association.”

That’s…strange. Whatever the reason is, Arata supposes that he doesn’t really mind. Soon, he has another of Hikari’s phrases added to his mental list.

_Of course I’ll marry you._

:::

“Hey there, papa,” Hikari whispers, once Touka is put to bed, and Arata smiles at her helplessly. Today was the first time Touka spoke — _“Papa!”_ — and his chest still feels ridiculously warm.

“You’ll be next,” he tells her. “Don’t worry.”

“Oh, I’m not worrying about that. I am worrying a little bit, though.”

“About what?”

Her arms slide over his shoulders. She kisses his chin, and then his mouth.

“About what will happen if we’re both killed,” she murmurs, “and Touka-chan is left by herself.”

Arata is so startled that he jerks away from her.

“W-why would you say that?” he gasps, and Hikari laughs.

“What do you mean? It’s not vulgar or anything. It’s just a real possibility.”

“So? It’s…that’s just…too terrible. I don’t want to think about it.”

Hikari crooks her arm, rests her hand on her waist.

“Just because it’s horrible doesn’t mean you should ignore it,” she tells him. “You can’t just live life pretending that nothing’s ever going to get through to you.”

“I don’t want to think about it,” he repeats. “At least… not like that. It just…feels like bad luck.”

Hikari frowns.

“There are certain things you don’t say too, right?” he asks. “To avoid bad luck.”

She sighs.

“Okay,” she concedes. “But we need to talk at least a little bit about it.”

About what will happen if one of them encounters Doves. Don’t fight; just run. Lead the Doves as far away as possible, and stay low. If they need to send messages, no phone calls, no names that could give them all away. Just leave a note or something in one of the select locations indicating when they’ll come back.

“You’ll remember?” Hikari asks. When Arata nods, she nods back, firmly. “Alright. Then, we’ll never talk about it again.”

And they don’t. But the next time they put Touka to bed, some of Hikari’s words come back to him, and he realizes, for the first time, how especially sad it is that all Touka-chan has in this world besides her parents is that stuffed rabbit. And yet…and yet…

It would just be so difficult if there was another child to take care of.

“Don’t worry,” Hikari says excitedly when he mentions this to her. “Don’t worry! There’s two of us, after all, right? We can handle anything.”

She is so bright and happy.

“Yeah,” Arata says, suddenly believing it. “We can.”

She’s already wrapping her arms around him, kissing his chin and his mouth and his bobbing throat.

“Give me an Ayato-chan this time, papa,” Hikari murmurs, and even though Arata understands that on some level he can’t really control what happens, at this moment, he feels capable of anything.

:::

Ayato always knows when his mother isn’t nearby, and his cries always hurt Arata’s ears a little more than Touka’s did.

“Mama will be back soon,” he says, as calmly as possible, but the words turn into a sort of plead, and Ayato wails harder.

They were all supposed to go out together, but it’s getting close to when the sale time ends, and they really don’t have the money for full-priced groceries. Arata waits and waits, and then leaves a note on the fridge and heads out, with Ayato in a carrier on his back and Touka stumbling sleepily as he drags her along.

The change in environment, thankfully, startles Ayato into being quiet. He pulls and gnaws at Arata’s hair and then falls asleep. The three of them make it just in time to the store, and Arata is relieved that time is so short that he doesn’t need to pretend to evaluate different packages of meat.

“Tastes bad,” Touka says, and Arata smiles and pats her head.

“It looks like it tastes bad because we still need to cook it,” he says, and Touka frowns at him.

“Then it will taste _really bad_.”

Someone has overheard their exchange and is laughing. Arata makes himself laugh too, and kneels.

“Listen carefully to Papa, Touka-chan. Can you hear me?”

“Mmm,” Touka says nervously.

“Touka-chan, people work very hard to cook food. So, when Touka-chan is around them, don’t say things like ‘I hate it, it tastes bad.’ Otherwise, Touka-chan is going to hurt people’s feelings.”

Touka looks stricken.

“Touka-chan hurt Papa?” she asks.

“Ah…hmm. Just a little.”

Touka hugs him immediately. “Sorry, Papa,” she mumbles, “sorry, sorry,” and he lifts her up into his arms and kisses her cheek.

“I forgive you, Touka-chan. Now let’s go home so we can make food for Mama.”

Touka-chan is so adorable, and capable of saying more and more every day. It’s probably getting to be around the time that he and Hikari should teach her more about how to act safely in this world. But, at least for now...Arata smiles to himself as Touka nuzzles her face sleepily against his neck. Touka-chan insulting her father’s cooking in public — Hikari will probably be delighted to hear about it.

They make their way to the cashier. Arata is distracted when it happens — re-calculating the price of things in their basket, trying to remember exactly how much money he has. For that reason, he doesn’t really hear people talking until his mind registers the phrase _a woman ghoul_.

His blood turns ice-cold.

“It killed both of the investigators,” someone is saying.

“N-no way! A ghoul that powerful, in our own ward? What was the claw like?”

“I heard it wasn’t like anything ever seen before. It almost looked like it was emanating light.”

_“Papa!”_ Touka shrieks. “It hurts!”

He’s squeezing her too hard. Arata jumps and then sets her down hastily.

“S-sorry…I’m…sorry,” he manages.

_Don’t panic,_ he thinks. _There’s no way. It’s impossible._

_Hikari is fine. Hikari wouldn’t be out right now. We promised not to fight. Hikari is already at the apartment, waiting._

He makes himself walk home at a normal pace. He makes himself take deep breaths. He makes himself imagine Hikari sitting on the couch, complaining good-naturedly about when dinner will be ready, laughing at his story about Touka.

_She’ll be there. Hikari is home. She’s home._

“We’re home, Mama!” Touka yells, rushing in as soon as Arata unlocks the door.

“Mama?” Touka calls a moment later.

She starts looking through the rooms, calling out every time a door opens. No one replies. The strength leaves Arata’s body; he drops the bag of groceries on the floor.

There’s a note on the fridge — the one that he wrote himself and put there before leaving. Touka is trotting back.

“Where’s Mama?” she asks, and he looks at her, and opens his mouth, and can’t manage a single word.

Ayato stirs, and thrashes a little, and begins to cry.

:::

He has to find her. He doesn’t care what it is that the two of them have planned in advance — he has to find her — he needs to. He would be out the door already if it weren't for Touka and Ayato, but as it is, both of them are still so small, and if Ayato keeps wailing like this they’re going to receive another noise complaint, and they can’t afford any other apartments in this area, and Ayato is probably hungry but Arata has nothing nothing _nothing_ on hand to feed him, and —

And Arata needs to take a deep breath. He’s their father. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.

_Hikari is fine. She’s not back because she’s leading them away. She’s alright. She’ll be back._

His chest hurts and even given the current situation, he can’t stop thinking things like, _I just need to tell Hikari about this, she’ll say something that will —_

Right.

No.

_Calm down._

:::

As soon as Ayato and Touka are asleep, he leaves.

It’s so far into the night it’s almost morning. He is familiar with combing the streets at this time and can tell immediately they’re emptier than usual. A passerby touches him and Arata almost yells, but they just want to tell him there’s a hunt for a ghoul going on right now, and Arata should go home before he’s caught up in it.

“Though,” the person says, “I heard they summoned Special Class Arima, so there probably won’t be anything to worry about soon.”

“What a relief,” Arata says, “thank you,” and as soon as he is out of sight, he runs.

_Hikari,_ he cries silently. _Hikari, Hikari, as soon as I find you, we’ll rush home, we’ll take Touka and Ayato and we’ll just run. We’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. You will be fine. And I — I will be —_

They have five spots they’ve designated as places to leave messages, and he goes to one after the other, feeling no exhaustion, dampening his growing panic. After visiting all five, he goes back to the first one again, and then the second. The third location is the alley where their paths first crossed, and though the downspout there was empty before, this time, when he reaches inside, his fingers rustle a piece of paper.

His heart leaps. His head snaps to either side of the alleyway — was she just here? Is she still here? — but the streets are empty. In his excitement he accidentally pushes the paper further up the pipe, and it takes some bending and straining to retrieve it.

_I’ll be back tomorrow,_ he is expecting to read.

Or, _Meet me._

He would be satisfied with even a simple, _Don’t worry. I’m okay._

:::

The note says none of those things.

_Arata,_ she wrote. _I love you._


End file.
